


The Molt

by Enclave



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Allergies, Angel Dean Winchester, Gen, Guardian Angel Dean, Hurt/Comfort, Sickfic, Sneezing, Wing Kink, sneeze kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-26 04:16:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1674374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enclave/pseuds/Enclave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is Sam's guardian angel and lives with him on Earth. When the seasons change, Dean sheds his feathers. Sam is allergic but wants to help anyway. Oneshot, sneezefic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Molt

Sam wakes up in the motel room at maybe 4 AM. He can remember drinking last night, with Dean at some seedy bar, and Dean refusing to use his angel mojo to zap them back to the motel ("I don't feel like it; I'm too drunk, we'll walk,") and then not much after that. There is no reason for him to be awake at 4 in the morning, and he's not too happy about it, but the clock's piercingly red glowing numbers don't lie. He buries his face in his pillow and tries to go back to sleep when he hears a noise that he somehow recognizes as a repeat of the one that woke him - a half-muffled, keening whine from Dean's side of the room. He's conscious (well, as conscious as he can be hungover) in a moment, pulling his face from the pillow and rubbing his eyes. "D'n?"

"'S fine, Sammy, go t' sleep," Dean mumbles, his voice deep. A sensation comes over Sam, one he's felt before - an allergic itch in his nose, all up the bridge.

"Dean, are you - eh -" His breath hitches, and he gives an unexpectedly wet sniffle and presses his wrist under his nose to appease the itch. "You okay?"

"I said I'm fine," he says, squirming under his blankets. "Go back to sleep."

"I don't think I c- can... _hRESCH_!" Sam sneezes loudly into one cupped hand and then freezes in place. There's snot everywhere and the bathroom's all the way across the room. He sniffles some more and gets up to wash his hands off, but he's overtaken by another flare of itchiness and then - "Ah... _ASCHOO_! Ugh..." He snorts back the mucus and walks over to the bathroom, wipes his hands off and blows his nose a few times. But the tickle doesn't abate.

"Huh... eh... D-dean..." His voice wavers as he tries to get the sentence out. "Are you m- ehhhh.... molti- _ESCHOO_! Molting?" He gives another loud snort, wiping the clear liquid from his upper lip with one hand.

"No," Dean lies. Sam rolls his eyes.

"Wh- why couldn't you ( _snrx_ ) tell me about this kind of thing before ( _snrxxx_ ) I'm sneezing and out of allergy meds? Huh- _NTCSCHHHuh_!"

"We weren't so far north last week... I thought I'd have another week or two. But now that we're up in fucking Vermont..." Dean sounds aggravated, his voice growling. He shifts under the blankets again, and now Sam can see the wisps of fluff floating from underneath the covers. He sniffles liquidly. Sam's always been allergic to the molt off Dean's angel wings, ever since the angel became his protector and confidante when he was a teenager.

"Alright," Sam sighs, "It's okay. Let me see."

"Sam, it's fine."

"Let me _see_."

With a few more noises of discontent, Dean drags himself out from under the covers along with a dusting of wispy down and a few stiffer, more mature feathers that tumble out from the linens. Sam's sniffling intensifies, quiet wet little sniffles that don't do him any good. He stifles a sneeze into his shoulder - " _H'gschhuh_!" - before walking over to Dean, who is shedding his grey t-shirt to allow his angelic wings to shimmer into existence, his 12-foot wingspan too much for the small motel room. He has to pull in the metacarpals at the ends. The feathers look dull, dusty, lackluster, and the mature feathers and the down under them are coming off in patches.

"I'll help, just let me get the tissues first."

Dean plants his face unhappily into his pillow. He hates molting, always has, since it's a period of vulnerability, his heavenly armor coming away in wisps and tufts. He scoots to turn around on the bed so he can get his back up against the cool wall of the motel room and gently arches and grinds his wings into the wall, dislodging a few more of the mature feathers and soothing the burning on the surface of his wings.

"Here, Dean, turn back around."

"Sammy, it's fine, really. You can go. I'll deal with it and call you when it's done."

"Dean, I like doing this."

"Your allergies... You could get meds for both of us. I think we're out of ibuprofen. It'd be helpful and you'd be away from... this." He glances resentfully at the growing drifts of down in the corner of the room closest to his bed.

Sam sighs and snuffles, wiping at his nose with the cuff of his sleeve. "Fine. But when I come back I'm staying. Okay?"

"Whatever, jerk," Dean says offhandedly.

"Bitch," Sam responds automatically, grabbing the car keys and hurrying out the door.

In truth, the period of Sam's absence is almost unbearable. The problem is that in his human vessel, Dean can't actually reach his full wingspan with his hands, and his wings itch like no other. He can preen out the little feathers along his shoulders and nearer to his back, but they're at an awkward angle. He takes this approach for a few minutes, methodically scratching the down off his wings and plucking out the loose feathers. It doesn't feel like enough, and he quickly grows frustrated and rougher with his actions, and it hurts when he accidentally yanks out a feather that wasn't quite ready yet. Then he flips onto his back on the bed and rubs what he can of his wings on the mattress, littering it with yet more of the quills. He stands in the exact center of the motel room and beats the air with his wings, which shakes off the loose down closer to his wingtips, but also knocks the clock off the wall. It shatters on the floor. "Shit," he growls, carefully tucking his wings back in close to his body so he can deal with the damage. They itch even more when they're folded and he has to take deep breaths to avoid punching something.

He tries to clean up the glass, but he's actually shaking somewhat with discomfort and he feels weirdly hot and cold. He crouches on the dirty motel carpeting (he's immune to the grime factor by now; it barely bothers him) and only manages to pick up one or two shards of the glass before his hand slips and his slits his palm with one of them. He hisses, rearing back and dropping the shards and this is the scene Sam walks in on, Dean pressing his thumb into his sliced hand and the broken clock on the floor and the blood and down everywhere.

"Dean..." Sam sighs, putting down the bag with the pills in it on a cheap wood bedside table. "What is all th-this?" The down is already bothering his nose again. He rubs at it with his wrist.

"I don't know, Sammy, what does it fucking look like?" the angel snaps.

"Is your hand okay?"

"'S fine. Don't wanna waste grace on it while I'm down here." Certain battallions of angels are less than happy about Dean's choice to live on Earth with Sam, and when tensions run high, he's hesitant to use his grace for anything less major than life-or-death issues, lest the echoes of it appear on angel radio and allow the others to locate him.

"Let me see," Sam says, sniffling again already. He takes Dean's hand and looks at the cut. "We'll put gauze on it. It'll be alright. Are you feeling okay?"

"'M fine."

"Are you really?" Sam asks, his eyebrows raised in seriousness.

"I want Ibuprofen." Sam laughs and obliges.

"I already took m-my - huh- _AESCHOO_! My pill," he says, shaking out two of the red tablets into Dean's open palms. Since the seasonal molt is caused by grace, grace can't cure the ache it comes with, or the itching, burning sensation of the feathers working themselves free. Dean swallows the pills dry. "Get on the bed," Sam demands, pushing Dean onto the mattress, where he lies facedown, making pathetic noises that Sam wishes he could capture on tape. "Spread your wings." Sam blows his nose, a preliminary gesture, and gets to work.

He starts with Dean's left wingtip, smushed up against the wall of the motel. "We'll go out somewhere rural where you can stretch them out later," he promises Dean as he works his fingers into the silky down.

The down of Dean's wings is cool and soft and it feels like white sheets on a summer evening when fireflies blink and locusts sing outside an open window and a cool breeze breathes in the room. Sam closes his eyes as he works his fingers into it. It would be divine if it weren't for his allergies; he can already feel his nose beginning to drip. He sniffs it back and begins to rub the membrane of the wing with the pads of his fingers. Black, pearlescent down falls to the floor like snow and the first wet sneeze comes - " _H'eschuh_!" - into Sam's shoulder. "Sorry," he says, sniffling madly.

"S'okay Sammy," Dean says. "Feels good." Dean's fingers are sunk into the pillow and his eyes have fluttered shut. Sam would never say it aloud, but he likes seeing the normally stoic angel laid out like this on the bed, likes the rare occasions when Dean will accept his help. It makes him feel like he's giving back for a change. 

Sam is mechanical, massaging the down from Dean's follicles and raking through the stiffer feathers with clawed fingers, dislodging the old feathers one by one, discarding the old plumage on the floor and welcoming the growth of the new, vibrant feathers that will take its place over the next week or so. His breath hitches frequently and he's constantly fighting his running nose and his urge to sneeze, swiping at his streaming nostrils with the back of his hand and pinching them, rubbing them, anything to quell the itch. Halfway through the first wing, he takes a break, quickly rinses the down off his hands, and grabs a handful of tissues just as his defenses break down and the sneezes start to come.

" _Hehschuh_! Eh... heh... ah... _GSCHUH_!" He sniffles purposefully into the wad of tissues. " _Hreschh_!"

"You okay, Sammy? Want to stop?"

"N-hhh-no, Dean, it's - huh - _GSCHHH_! It's f- fine." He snuffles some more. "Just a l-hhhh... a little sneezy... _Hehschooo_! Alright... ( _snrxx_ ). I think I'm good." His nose is running and it tickles but it's not as urgent an itch as it was a minute ago. Sam climbs up onto the bed, planting his knees on either side of Dean's back so he can reach the sections of wing closer to the center. "This okay?"

"I'm okay if you're okay," Dean mumbles.

"I'm okay," Sam says with a sniffle and a laugh. "You shouldn't be so worried about m-me. I'm not the-hhh... the one who's molting and feverish and somehow managed to break a clock in the fifteen minutes I was g- hhhhh - gone... huh... _Eschoo_!" Dean mutters something almost unintelligible about how the clock dissed his heavenly Father, and there's another bout of rapid sniffling, but Sam doesn't let up with his fingers, instead twisting to rub his nose on the soft and now damp jersey fabric on the shoulder of his t-shirt. The motel room is unlit and in the soft light Dean's wings shine like water.

Sam has to take another few breaks before he's worked his way all the way across Dean's wingspan to blow and wipe his running, itchy nose, but Dean settles down more and more as he works until he's a dead weight on the bed, his limp right wing draped across the entirety of the hotel room. Sam sighs and steps back, rubbing his nose and giving quick, wet sniffles to keep his dripping nose at bay. "You awake, Dean?"

There's no answer.

Sam washes the fine fluff off his hands and wonders how of all the hunters, he was lucky enough to deserve a guardian angel to watch over him in person. He wonders sometimes at Dean's loyalty - he's learned that it's not common practice for an angel to literally live on Earth with his charge, but since Sam has no surviving family, Dean has made an exception for him, an excpetion that's ostracized him from his batallion. All this for Sam, who, frankly, doesn't believe he deserves it. Yet in spite of everything, Dean stays. He snuffles into a tissue, getting his nose as clear as possible before he slips back out of the bathroom and into the motel room. He creeps up to Dean and gently nuzzles his way under Dean's wing, spooning the tired angel. He muffles an exhausted " _Ae'schuh_!" into the space between Dean's neck and clavicle; Dean doesn't respond, but tucks his wing securely around Sam as the human begins to drift off as well. It's been a long morning and they both deserve a nap.


End file.
